After three whole expansions that had dark narratives. And yet some of you on the forums want even more of it? Like are you serious right now? We need more dragonflight narratives and then slowly getting us back into the darker tones. But, nope the so called “community” want the game narrative to be more dark and grim like that will somehow magically improve the games stories as a whole.
During the three dark expansions I was beginning to feel burnt out because of the dark narrative expansions I needed a break from all of those and dragonflight was the perfect candidate to be that break and I do hope that the War Within is also a break expansion that will slowly get the narrative dark again and not rush to be dark just for the sake to be dark.
Because it’s not dark as in creepy, scary, lovecraftian dark
It’s made for a 12 year old, mustache twirling, Saturday morning cartoon dark
I want the WAR put back into WARCRAFT
not twink dragon daycare
not kungfu pandas
not edgy nipple man’s tower of snoreghast with edgeboi x depression queen fanfic
not author self insert nathanos
I wanna see heads getting chopped off, towns getting razed in WAR and CONQUEST! I don’t want this dumb baby narrative written about feelings and sick family. This is WARCRAFT! not glittersparkle’s therapy session with kalegos
The thing is a ‘dark’ storyline with the disjointed/disconnected writing is still going to feel bad. What people really want is cinematics that are more action-based and which leaves snippets for world-building + speculation and leave the more in-depth lore and dialogue within text or voice overs.
I just want cool.
Tired of the cringe final raid cutscenes being a 1 second YOU DID IT.
lmao.
i want dark narratives, yes.
seriously.
Edgelords gonna edgelord. If it’s not grey on dark grey with death metal pumping, they’re not going to be happy.
Lol, this has gotta be a meme.
Because Chase, there never is nuance, just a pendulum swing.
So a lot of it ends up feeling like DF turned into the meme when people spoke of playing hello kitty adventure island. DF almost feels like a meme of that saying lol
Darker stories do exist they’re just contained to side quests in Dragonflight really 
Nathanos has been in WoW since classic where he was no different from the Nathanos we had all the way to the point he died except getting an updated model.
I wish chances are it’s 100% serious
I think people just want a balance. Even MoP had the sha, mantid, mogu (who were slavers), and a rather genocidal Garrosh.
Dragonflight lacks a proper balance IMO. Although I think a bigger problem is that the incarnates/primalists just feel like a rip off of the twilight and Deathwing, just way less cool and with no build up.
I absolutely love dark narratives, but without some sort of lightness they become overpowering, and depressing. You need a little bit of hope and joy in the middle of it all. Like having a bleak frozen landscape, but in the middle of it all is a little tavern full of warmth, laughter, and music.
Some of the best stories are those that are deftly written to show an outwardly cheerful scene, to which there’s a very dark undertone just below the surface. Sometimes the scene looks utterly hopeless, but in the darkness lurks a saviour.
It’s not an either/or choice between dark or light. You need both to make a good story work.
A Saturday morning cartoon show would be darker than Dragonflight. This expansion is toothless. And I liked the edginess of Warcraft.
I think this is true. It needs to be a good story first and foremost, or at least one that doesn’t feel as if it completely immersion breaking to the universe it takes place in.
The story was never a focus for me before the new team starting driving the narrative, it’s now one of the main reasons I just don’t play the game anymore.
It is preferable if the story has tones that better reflect the feel of what warcraft used to be, but you’re right dark for the sake of it won’t cut it. I know that wasn’t your exact meaning with what you were saying, but it’s true. They tried that in Shadowlands and the story was garbage.
They should first commit themselves to a story that does not break the immersion of the universe it takes place in, it’s important for an MMO. But they also should not try to make a story dark for the sake of it, they really need to focus and improve on actually writing a good story, especially if what they come up with feels jarring placed in the warcraft universe.
Sooner or later people are going to have to realise that the writers or narrative drivers at the moment in this game are simply vastly incompetent at their jobs. They have all the common tropes of a poor amateur writer, too much tell, not enough show, all characters sound like they are the same person etc. Light story, dark story, whatever they write will drive people away because it will surely be a poor quality narrative.
One can only hope Metzen can fix it.
There’s a balance that needs to be had that the current writers seem to have lost.
Dragonflights story isn’t bad because it’s too nice though. It’s bad because they screwed up behind the scenes and it’s incredibly obvious. Go read the latest book, then play the game.
The lore between books and and games has never been more inconsistent than it is right now. I don’t know what happened, or what they’re doing at Blizzard, but they need to fix communication.
I’ve never considered the story in WOW to be dark or edgy. Even the Maw could have been more dreary and darker.
When I want a dark story, I go and play Diablo…
The Scourge were about as dark as Warcraft could get. Flesh eating zombies, abominations with guts hanging out, wagons that launched plagued corpses at enemies that would explode with gore. Killing women and children and raising them as unliving monstrosities. Ritual sacrifices. It peaked there.
Ever since the Scourge were put to the side, I feel like Warcraft has failed to really bring things back to that level. The burning of Teldrassil being the closest we got.
I don’t think people are asking for Warcraft to become grimdark like Warhammer 40k, but just to bring it back to where it once was.
tyrande my love WHERE ARE YOU
- quality blizzard writing
Just as bad, but with horribly disjointed jaws flailing around wildly?
Or delivering flowers in redridge?
I honestly thought about getting into diablo 4, but i can’t support it with all the microtransactions it has
Plus they killed Lilith. A villain who could have easily be the antihero